William Pierce (politician)

William Pierce or William Pierce, Jr. (1753 – December 10, 1789) was an army officer during the American Revolutionary War and a member of the United States Constitutional Convention of 1787.

William Pierce was born in York County, Virginia in 1753, the third and youngest son of Matthew and Elizabeth Pierce.[1] As a young man, he studied art under Charles Willson Peale in Maryland and returned to Williamsburg, Virginia to accept commissions in the Summer of 1775.[2] As tensions with Great Britain turned into armed conflict, Pierce participated in the fighting at Hampton, Virginia, in September 1775. Pierce was commissioned a Captain in the 1st Continental Regiment of Artillery the following year as the new country organized its forces for war.[3] After months of guarding against British incursions in the Hampton Roads, the First Regiment of Continental Artillery was ordered to join the Main Army at Valley Forge in the Spring of 1778.[4] After his regiment arrived in camp, William Pierce's battery was then detached to Major General John Sullivan's command in Rhode Island.[5] Suffering from poor health, Pierce voluntarily suspended his company command and accepted a position as an aide-de-camp to General Sullivan in early 1779. He attended his commander in the punitive expedition in Upstate New York to subdue the British-aligned Iroquois during the summer.[6]

Returning to Williamsburg on furlough in early 1780, he evidently studied at the College of William & Mary and was accepted as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.[7] As the War for American Independence shifted to the southern states, William Pierce was again invited to become an aide-de-camp to a general officer in December 1780, this time to Major General Nathanael Greene. Pierce accepted and joined his new corps on its fighting retreat in North Carolina in early February 1781.[8] William Pierce proved himself valuable to his General over the course of the next two years, not only in his secretarial duties but as a military officer. For example, he assisted in the rallying a contingent of Virginia troops at a critical moment during the Battle of Hobkirk Hill and was also Greene's selection to carry news of the Battle of Eutaw Springs to the Continental Congress.[9]

With the end of the war, Pierce also established himself as a merchant and planter, and then married the daughter of a wealthy South Carolinian.[10] Conditions for business were dim during the Confederation period, so William Pierce sought political office with hopes of improving them and was elected to represent Chatham County in the state legislature on February 1, 1786.[11] That body promptly elected him to the Continental Congress, as well as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. In January 1787, he attended Congress in New York and then the convention in Philadelphia in May.[12] He attended the proceedings and spoke on a number of points, but also recorded a series of "Character Sketches" which provide contemporary narrative on the personalities of the members of the Convention.[13] Although he agreed with the end result of the proceedings, he did not sign the Constitution, having left at the end of June to attend to "a piece of business so necessary that it became unavoidable." The business was a duel with merchant John Auldjo, after tempers had flared over mishandled "mercantile dealings." Ironically, Auldjo's second, Alexander Hamilton, intervened and prevented the contest.[14] Returning to Georgia, Pierce continued in the state legislature and, in 1789, received a respectable number of votes for Governor.[15]

Pierce died at his plantation near Savannah on December 10, 1789 after a lingering illness.[16]